SNIPPETS

THE INSPIRED FRAME, ROHIT CHAWLA
Tasveer, Bikaner House, New Delhi

Tasveer presents The Inspired Frame — an exhibition of photographs by Rohit Chawla that pay tribute to three renowned and seminal artists: Raja Ravi Varma, Gustav Klimt and Frida Kahlo, alongside select works inspired by miniature paintings seen for the first time in public. Alongside the exhibition, Tasveer is pleased to launch a new book that aside from exquisitely rendered reproductions of all the photographs in the show carries text by Rupika Chawla. In the photographic series that form part of The Inspired Frame, Rohit Chawla reconstructs tableaus and compositions as featured in famous works of art, using contemporary models to recreate life-like experiences of the originals. Raja Ravi Varma, known to many as the father of Indian modernism, was one of India’s most popular portraiture artists. Borrowing heavily from Indian mythology, Ravi Varma used the European technique of realism in oil painting to produce spectacular portraits that were most widely disseminated through their use in calendar art. Chawla, lamenting the current trend in Indian fashion photography to jettison its rich cultural heritage, attempts in these photographs to relive and recreate his legacy of a unique visual frame of reference.